Saturday, July 19, 2014

PERSPECTIVES ON DIVERSITY AND CULTURE


 The three people I chose to question for this week assignment are a 47 year old African American man, a 55 year old (acquaintance) Caucasian woman , and a 28 year old  female( family member)  African American.

The African American male define culture as” being your beliefs, religion and other things that are in still in you from your  up bring, something’s which are passed down from one generation to another”.

 He define diversity as the differences between people from the same background or from different ones”.

My acquaintance define culture as” your way of life, and a person perspective of who they are and who other are as well. Diversity is the difference that a group of people may have.

The 28 year old family member define culture as" being the event , foods, and holidays a person  celebrates that represent their culture".

Diversity as being an "variety of differences".

 When I asked these people about their definition they all had to think for a few moment and seem to struggle with expressing their definition.  This assignment reinforced my belief that culture and diversity are very vital parts of understanding the children and families we serve in the educational profession. People are aware of the surface culture someone may have but not aware of the deep culture that identifies who we are as well.

4 comments:

  1. I liked that one of the definitions you got said culture is instilled in your front your upbringing and is passed down from generation to generation. This is a great point and I'm not sure I would have thought of that in my own definition of culture. I think the struggle to express a definition of culture and diversity was common in all of our experiences with this assignment, Barbara. The people I asked seemed to worry about being "right" or "wrong" which led them to not go very far in depth. My Kindergartners are excited to answer every question no matter what the subject and they never worry about being wrong! Somewhere along the way we have lost the joy in learning something new. It is okay to not know something! I love when people ask questions or look into learning something new. That is how we grow as people! If we lived our lives always worried about being wrong we would never get anything done.

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  2. Hi Barbara,

    I liked that you interviewed a variety of ages. Before coming into this course I too only saw the surface of culture. However, now have been opened to a whole new way of looking at diversity and culture I believe I now know how to make all children and families feel welcomed and included in my classroom.

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  3. Hello Barbara,
    Thank you for sharing your thought with us. I enjoyed reading through the varying thoughts and perspectives about culture and diversity. I also commented about surface culture . I learned a lot by being encouraged to think deeper and expanding on my initial thoughts about culture. Thanks!
    Penny

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  4. Barbara you had some diverse answers from your three people. I had response similar to your male acquaintance's about how others view the world in comparison to themselves. I am surprised by the youngest person's response I thought they might of had a more detailed response to how they viewed culture. As myself being apart of the young adult culture, we sometimes have very opinionated and detailed views, which makes us diverse.

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